Cinetape.. Does anyone use these?

[Rocco Schult]

Yeah.. that would be awesome. Just have the laser/ultrasonic beam move to the indicated position on the LCD then get a reading and tell the motors/lens where to go.

Ugh, thought I get a patent on that one :greedy: Now that its online, Canon had a iris/eye controlled focus in some of their systems, like T30 I believe and one or another consumer camcorder.
Thought about stripping the iris recognizer out of one and put in on top of a RED EVF for an "interactive focuspuller".
No idea how accurate that thing was though.
Of course this is not done 'just so', but I thought of it being a cool idea. And so, it could be done remotely by a focus 'watcher', especially steadywork...
bidirectional communication, proprietary protocol, reverse engineering, uuuh...

 

[red1225]

ok...first of all a laser is a terrible idea...even if its off while the shutter is exposing. It's just to dangerous for an actor, crew member or any other poor schmuck or innocent by stander that happens to look at the camera. An experienced focus puller with a Hiliti that takes a quick measurment before the shot is one thing but a constant flickering beam is just obnoxious.

Also...the Cinetape is an awsome tool for long lens work up close and when actors are walking towards the camera...once again an experienced focus puller can use this tool effectively AND keep an eye on the barrel. You would be hard pressed to NOT find one on any feature or tv show. It is by no means a replacement for a cloth tape...just a tool to assist.

Also in my opinion there is something organic to having someone pull focus as opposed to having the camera do it electronicly...its gotta have that emotion.

For those of you looking to build a focus system...you should check out Arri's new system. You can input your stop and focal lenght...then with the assistance from a cinetape, an umbra lumen will give you your exact focus and a penumbra lumen will give you your precieved acceptable focus on a wireless hand unit. Very cool.

Regards..

 

[Mark Mannschreck]

here's my idea -

"A special digital detection program will scan for facial details and then control autofocus operation based on the location of the detected face in the scene. Even if the subject moves, or as the photographer recomposes the picture, Face-priority AF will respond and keep focus on the subject’s face. Manual techniques that formerly required the photographer to use focus lock can be avoided in favor of the new automation of Face-priority AF. It’s faster, responsive to creative composition, and makes portrait picture taking easier than ever."

Actually that's from Nikon's Coolpix Face-priority AF news of '05 - but why couldn't that technology eventually be incorporated?

You could set a smooth attack and decay much like an audio compressor.

 

[CVB]

ok...first of all a laser is a terrible idea...even if its off while the shutter is exposing. It's just to dangerous for an actor, crew member or any other poor schmuck or innocent by stander that happens to look at the camera. An experienced focus puller with a Hiliti that takes a quick measurment before the shot is one thing but a constant flickering beam is just obnoxious.

Most of the laser systems I've seen are Infra Red and eye safe. There are a couple cinema laser range finding systems and they are VERY expensive. I agree that all of this is for spot checking and I don't really expect anyone to use it to automatically pull focus... it would be very difficult to jump back and forth between points if the laser was affixed along the optical axis. If it had the ability to automatically pull focus I don't think people would complain though.

 

[Michael Stanmore]

I saw the Cmotion system in all it's glory at IBC this week, and I have to say, it was pretty cool. It's not like I'm going to need all the functionality it had, such as automatically compensating for exposure during a speed ramp... but a system like that to help us semi-pro jackasses keep our glorious 4K in focus, would be so great. But... 40000 bucks is a little more than we can throw together.

I'd love an integrated system that has:

motor driven gears to drive the focus, iris, (and sometimes zoom) rings on the lens.
those motors attached to a receiver that gets control sent to it from a remote follow focus setup that the AC has.
the remote FF system the AC is holding has a normal focus pulling knob, and also an iris slider, and whatever else you want, zoom too presumably.

attached to the FF will be a small LCD that is receiving the information about what the state of the lens is for iris, focus and zoom, as well as what lens it is. From this, it consults DOF charts and such that are part of the software, and, by getting information from a laser tapemeasure on top of the camera, it is able to display in real time where your focus position is in comparison to where the object in line of the laser-scope is. It will also show DOF which changes in real time to show how much margin for foolishness there is.

The Cmotion has dozens of amazing features beyond this, but just what I've listed above is what I'm really interested in...


or am I just looking for a crutch to be lazy with?

 

[Michael Stanmore]

Oh and I'd like to apologise to the Cmotion folk for encouraging someone else to make a cheaper version of your product... I'd buy it if I could...it's a helluva LCS.

 

[jamesedwelland]

I too saw C Motion at IBC. Was very impressed...

With 4k, good lenses, and all the chat about zooming into the image in post to resize/reframe, the way focus falls off with digital sensors as opposed to film and so on means focus is becoming very critical.

Also, in my experience, the things that take the time now on, for example, a drama shoot are rehearsals, moving and rigging the camera, and focus.

So not only is focus critical quality wise, it can also be time consuming. I know loads of you will say a good focus puller will be quick; but I have worked with some very good ones, and it still takes time to get it right.

In the end spending money on a system that helps focus is probably money well spent, certainly cheaper than bringing an actor back for a reshoot...

 

[Michael Stanmore]

yeah... agreed.